Computer users often store music, movies, and other media files on their computers. By so doing, users can later play and record their music without having to get another copy. But filing systems in many computers are not geared to allow users to easily view and use their media files.
To correct this, media libraries were created. A media library typically allows a user to graphically view his or her media files that are stored on his or her computer. These media libraries provide a different, more user-friendly way to view media files than most computer filing systems. Instead of showing media files like other data and programming files, they can be arranged by artist, genre, album, common title, and the like. They are also often shown with additional options from a related media player, like options to play the media file or add it to a CD that a user is burning.
FIG. 1 shows an exemplary user interface 102 of a media library. This user interface 102 shows how media files can be arranged to make it easier for users to analyze, view, and use their media files. A media table 104 shows a way in which media files can be arranged based on information about the content of the media files. Here, the media files are arranged using information about each media file's artist, album, and genre. Likewise, a media file description space 106 shows information about particular media files. This information is additional to information about a media file's location, and is often included in media libraries but is not typically present when viewing media files in a computer filing system.
Thus, one of the goals of a typical media library is to show and arrange media files based on information about the content of these media files. This aspect of media libraries can be more useful to users than other ways of arranging media files, such as with a typical computer filing system. Typical computer filing systems arrange media files based on each media file's location, not its content. Users, however, often prefer that their media files be organized and shown by their content, not their location. This is one advantage of media libraries.
There are significant problems with current media libraries, however. To use a media library, often users have to manually add, delete, and change links in the media library whenever the user adds, deletes, or moves a media file stored on his or her computer.
This manual building and maintaining what is in a media library is often annoying to even sophisticated users. To unsophisticated users, this manual building can be difficult and time-consuming.
In some cases, media library manufacturers partially address these problems by having a media player automatically add and delete links from a media library when a user opens their media player. These methods do so by synchronizing files in a user's hard-drive with the media library.
This partial solution, however, contains serious flaws. This synchronization method can take an extraordinary quantity of time to perform. Many users, when asked by a media player using this synchronization method to synchronize their media library with their harddrive, refuse to allow the operation because of how long it can take.
This synchronization method is not only slow, it is incapable of performing many important functions. It is incapable of properly accounting for media files being moved within a user's filing system, for instance. It is also incapable of knowing when not to add a link to a media library, instead adding links to media files in the user's computer that the user does not want in the user's media library.
Current synchronization methods fail to quickly and intelligently synchronize a user's media library with media files stored in the user's computer.